open-lords2

An open reimplementation of Lords of the Realm II (Sierra/Impressions, 1996), in the spirit of OpenXcom: our own engine, reading the original game's data files.

You must own a copy of the game. No assets are distributed here and none ever will be — see NOTICE. The engine reads an installation you supply and never writes to it.

What works

A single-player game plays from the front end to victory or defeat:

• Kingdom — the whole end-of-season economy: taxes, rations, grain, cattle, weather, industry, wages, ale, health, happiness, births, migration, events, revolts.
• Armies — raising, the armoury, mercenaries, marching, splitting, garrisons, foraging, taking counties, fog of war.
• Battles and sieges — field battles with the battle AI, auto-calculated results, castle building, laying siege, storming, moats and burning oil.
• AI lords — farming, war, sieges, diplomacy and alliances, trade.
• Merchants — routes, trading and the neutral market.
• Screens, sound and films — the campaign map, county panels, village, messages, options, tips, music, narration and the original's films.
• Saving — save, load and autosave.

docs/status.html grades every feature against the original, with the evidence for each.

Network play

Multiple players opens the lobby. The host presses Host a game and the lobby shows the address others type (its LAN address and port 4712). Windows asks once whether to let the game through its firewall: allow it on private networks, or open TCP port 4712. A peer who leaves or goes silent stops the game with their name; save it to go on alone against the computer. Games are recorded under %APPDATA%\open-lords2\replays.

What does not, yet

• Network play — deterministic lockstep is built and tested; the lobby and game over a network are in progress.
• A few gaps are named in the status page: closing archers in battle, one AI attack, some narration and cursor pictures.

Playing

Build it and point it at your install:

cargo run --release -p l2-game -- <install dir> [--mods <dir>]

A launcher that finds the install for you is on its way. Saves live in %APPDATA%\open-lords2\saves.

How it is built

Lords2.exe is an oracle, not a target: we read the original binary to answer what the game does, and where it disagrees with us it is right. Of its

1,464, and 3,345 tests pass.

Playing

powershell -File tools/run/package.ps1 builds a release and writes dist/open-lords2-<commit>.zip: the executable, LICENSE, NOTICE and tools/run/README-player.txt, which says where the game looks for the install, where saves and crash logs go, and the keys. No game file is ever in it (crates/l2-testkit/tests/package_contents.rs).

Contributing

Developers start at CLAUDE.md, the index to docs/. The most valuable thing anyone can offer is memory of playing the game: docs/mechanics.md exists to be read by a player and contradicted. If you remember a mechanic it does not list, please open an issue.

Licence

MIT — see LICENSE and NOTICE.

This is an independent reimplementation containing no code, art, sound or data from the original. Lords of the Realm II is copyright Sierra On-Line / Impressions Games and its present rights holders, who are not affiliated with this project and do not endorse it.